Nobility
by GraveDigger Resurrection
Summary: But in the end, Severus Snape is, in fact, an honorable man. He owes her an answer. PostHBP. ADMM references.


**Title:** Nobility  
**Rating: **PG-13 for dark-ish themes, and...uh, being really freaking depressing. Yeah.  
**Categories:** Angst, angst, angst, and...uh, no that just about covers it.  
**Summary: **But in the end, Severus Snape is, in fact, an honorable man. He owes her an answer. Post-HBP. ADMM references.  
**A/N:** I am always hesitant to post an HP story on this site, as I believe there is already enough utter _crap_ clogging it up without me adding to it. When you need a search engine for C2 groups, things have, quite frankly, gotten despairingly ugly. I feel guilty trying to write anything in the HP verse these days, because, while it's been done before in a manner much worse than mine, it has also, undoubtedly, been done much _better_ as well.

I don't expect many reviews for this one, but I post it anyway, to add my own bit of novel lack of originality to the deadly whirlpool that is this fandom.

* * *

When he finally dares to meet her eyes, he is surprised to find himself still alive.

Her wand is drawn of course, pointing straight at his heart, rigid and dangerous: a physical extension of the fury he sees flickering in her eyes.

It is only the trembling in her other hand that gives away the grief.

"Give me one good reason," she says to him softly, almost soothingly, her eyes glittering entrancingly at him like diamonds. Like the eyes of a snake, luring it's victim in to strike the deadly blow. He knows what she is asking, perhaps even better than she knows it herself. Her question is one that has kept him from sleep for all these months, haunting his days and savaging his nights. She wants one good reason why she shouldn't kill him. She wants one good reason why any of this is happening at all.

And he has not one to give her.

So he stands stock still and silent in his tattered black robes, feeling an icy wave of terror wash over him as her wand presses into his chest. Funny, he did not know he would be so afraid to die. He did not know he could still fear at all.

"Why?" She asks him again, and this time the tremor in her hand creeps into her voice as well.

Why indeed? There are so many tangents to that question; so many other complications are woven amongst it like a spider web, deadly and delicate. Just like she is.

_"I asked you a question, Snape!"_ Ah, and finally her tone rises into shrill hysteria, and her white-knuckled hand is pressing the wand so hard against his sternum, he believes it is about to break the skin.

He's never been a man of strict moral codes, or codes at all, other than the ones that would help him stay alive. He's never been what anyone would call 'nice.' And he enjoys that with every fiber of his being. But in the end, Severus Snape is, in fact, an honorable man. He owes her an answer.

And he still has a promise to keep.

"I cannot give you a good reason." The words are simple and rasping, hurting his raw throat, but not so much as they hurt the cold place deep inside him he supposes must be his heart.

She stares at him, incredulous and gaping, speechless in her fury. He can see the words flash across her eyes even before she thinks to say them.

_Avada Kedavra._

"I can't give a good reason, Minerva, because the reason is _not_ a good one." To other men, perhaps, it would seem a good and even noble reason. Other men would value keeping their word above all else.

He can only think what a damnably terrible time it was to become noble.

He watches as she draws herself up, rigid and erect, and oh so close to crumbling. "Well then," she says, as though the matter has been settled, and he believes perhaps it would be best to leave her with that notion and let her kill him. Perhaps in her vengeance she would find peace. "Well then," she repeats slowly, "there is no good reason for you to live. If you have no good reason why-- why he--" She breaks off, her teeth clicking shut against her misery.

As always, he is right there to continue picking at the wound. "--Why he died?" He finishes, and she flinches. "No, I have no good reason at all. I have only one very stupid, foolish reason." And then he stops, his obsidian eyes staring at her with an almost empty coldness.

"Well?" She bites out, pale in her anguished rage. Pale and wearied from nights spent dreaming of a time where He was still alive, and waking with a tear soaked pillow and an empty bed. _"Well?" _And she hates the edge in her voice. She does not recognize herself these days. She wonders what He would think of her now.

He regards her rather calmly, she thinks, for a man about to die. And he _is_ about to die, she reminds herself. Because curses are not the only things that can be deemed Unforgivable.

"I was keeping a promise."

She wants to laugh. She wants to cry. She wants him _dead._ "I'm sure Tom was positively _humbled_ by your loyalty." She never calls him Voldemort, no matter how many times He told her to. She is not so brave.

And now, to her surprise, she is not the only one who is angry. "I broke every promise to the Dark Lord I ever made," he hisses at her, with just a hint of his old sneer. "I broke every promise I ever gave to _anyone_ except…" he pauses, and for some reason her entire body seizes up in dread. "You husband."

_"LIAR!" _She shrieks at him, and the fury travels through her wand, a jolt of red-hot agony against his flesh.

He laughs.

"You promised _trustworthiness, _Severus!" She cries at him wildly, and her face contorts in a sneer so horribly reminiscent of his own that this time _he_ is the one to flinch. "And this is how far that promise has brought us all."

"And because I kept that promise, I had to keep another," He whispers back to her, looking away at last. There is an illness deep inside him that keeps surging forth like bile, cutting off his airway and making his head swim.

He supposes it must be guilt.

"He made me promise, and I kept my word. He made me promise…so I killed him." His gaze meets hers again, and he is more terrified by the dawning comprehension held there than by the wand held, deadly still, over his yet beating heart. And to his sudden horror, her eyes fill with tears.

"Tell me." She is trembling, and they are bother freezing in the damp darkness of the cave though his story is not one to warm the body or the soul, and her wand is still held steady, the words still darting across her emerald irises, a desperate urge that she cannot suppress, and he will not stop.  
_  
Avada Kedavra._

He does not know which hope bind him to his words: the hope that she will forgive him, or the hope that she will strike him down where he stands.

Either way, he tells her.

He tells her of the Unbreakable Vow, and Draco Malfoy's mission. He tells her about the Horcrux that was destroyed, and the damage it inflicted on the man who destroyed it. He tells her of his promise to do what needed done to save Draco, and to protect Harry Potter. He tells her of the begging _(Severus...please)_ and he tells her of the death of Albus Dumbledore.

He does not tell her of the pain, nor the fear, nor the guilt. He does not tell her of the tears he never shed, because murderer's do not cry.

She cries, though.

The wand falls from her limp hand with a clatter as she slides to the cold dirty ground of the cave. And he follows her down, wrapping her in an embrace that is unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and the only thing either of them have left. She does not accuse him further, does not move to rage against him. She merely sits, beaten, though hardly broken, and weeps the tears she has so long held back.

"I loved him," she sobs against him, and he knows that is not really the problem at all. The fact that she loved him is not what brought them here.

It is the fact that she _loves_ him.

And, he supposes, on some small and very vague level, he loves the old man, too.

"I'm sorry," he whispers into her hair so recently streaked with grey, helpless, and cold and untouchable in the way that only the very deeply touched can be.

"I know." And she cries harder.

And as they sit together in the darkness, the cold welling up from the very center of them, he knows he will never tell her the second part of his promise. Even as he keeps it.

**_"And Severus?" _**

"Yes, Headmaster?"

"After…after it is done, you must promise me but one more thing."

"Of course, Albus."

"Keep Minerva safe."

"I promise," He whispers to the darkness, holding the grieving woman in his arms.

And looking into the blackness, he sees and image, as if on loop, playing out inside his head. He sees pleading blue eyes begging him for an end he had to give, a flash of brilliant, sickly green, and a body falling, endlessly, lifelessly, over the stone parapet and into and eternity of nothingness.  
_  
Avada Kedavra. _

What a perfectly damnable time to become noble.

* * *

_So,_ _it's only been done a few dozen times. Er...hundred times. Er...yes well. _

_Anyway, review if you have the time. Encouragement would be treasured, and flames would be well deserved. Cheers._

_-GDR_


End file.
